There really are some awful PR pitches out there, with the rush to utilise aspects of social media into ad campaigns resulting in some pretty horrible creations.
And this. This is the Daddy of them all. I don’t really think that many PRs or journos or marketers really understand social media, or at least how best to utilise it. This is a perfect illustration.
The power of social media is in creating something of value that has the potential to zip around the web across multiple platforms. If you do this well then members of Joe Public will do the work for you.
I don’t have any inside information, but I’m willing to bet that CompareTheMarket.com has done pretty bloody well out of the CompareTheMeerkat.com campaign. It’s captured imaginations, is fluffy and potentially amusing. It’s perfect for social media platforms.
These Josh T-Mobile ads have not, because its fundamentally a pretty uninspired idea that smacks of lots of other bits and bobs out there at the moment.
‘Create a band by roaming around the country holding jamming sessions with oddballs’ is a cracking pitch only in the mind of an ad exec (and are all of those people on the bus really Josh fans, rather than paid-for actors and musicians?).
And if it were to ever take off it would only be due to the magnetic personality and shimmering talent of the individual fronting it.
Josh is not this person and, while probably a decent chap, cannot carry a massive multi-platform campaign on his thin, backpacking-around-India-during-a-gap-year shoulders and weedy one world wifflings.
Chuck in some awkward elements where Josh is required to suck some corporate cock in the form of some ill-fitting soundbites about how great T-Mobile is and the final nail in the coffin is hammered home.
I’ve said before that I don’t object in principle to stuff like this, but when it’s backed by a massive corporate outfit it’s never possible to see past the real reason it exists in the first place.
And that’s enough to turn it from something twee and rather nauseating into something genuinely awful.